Guitar

I am a very spirited, if not incredibly talented, guitar player. I first picked up the proverbial axe in the 8th grade, and began a lifelong study of music with its help.

I’ve always been fascinated by the sonic effects achieved with the electric guitar. Arguably, entire sub-genres of music have evolved around certain achievable sounds with the electric guitar. From the crystalline sounds of Wes Montgomery, the gritty sounds of BB King, the cranked tones of 70’s-era Rush, to the hardly-recognizable sounds of modern metal; all these sounds are achieved by the processed sounds of magnets.

These sounds generally require careful chains of expensive equipment. For example, one guitar pedal, the Klon Centaur, can sell for thousands of dollars! However, careful study and new advances in statistical learning have allowed a completely-digital real-time model of this expensive pedal. Best of all, it’s open source, so others can learn from the method!

I will be following the development of this area very closely. Great improvements have been made to the Linux Audio Guitarix project by transparently modeling circuits of general amplifiers. However, this new technology can completely change the game. Since some of these advances have been published in open-access journals, they have subsequently been productized by the open-source community. We could be seeing more extensive and impressive digital models make their way into our computers soon!